Supporters of Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff rally against her impeachment, in Brasilia this week.

Credit: Reuters / Ueslei Marcelino

The Auric Goldfinger of American politics hasn’t been neutralised, despite opinion polls showing him a loser in November’s presidential election against either of his possible rivals. New York is the home town of Donald Trump’s gilded empire, and on Tuesday he trumped the other runners for the Republican nomination.

Trump’s 60.4 per cent vote in New York ended the resurgence of Senator Ted Cruz in recent primaries in other states. It gets him significantly closer to the majority needed to win the nomination at the Republican convention in July, but he still needs a winning streak right through to the closing primary in California on June 7. John Kasich was second runner with 25.1 per cent, and Cruz got 14.5 per cent.

As expected, Hillary Clinton did well, too, in the Democrat vote in New York, the state she previously represented in the US senate, gaining 58 per cent of the vote. Bernie Sanders, who got the other 42 per cent, is unlikely to drop out of the race. He has campaign ads running in states yet to hold their primaries, and his team expects to do well in California.

The desperation in the Republican establishment gets deeper. They’ve been expecting Trump to fail in achieving a convention majority, opening up a “brokered” convention during which all his delegates would be freed up to vote for someone else. But who? Cruz is equally unelectable. Kasich is uninspiring. The popular Republican moderate Paul Ryan, speaker of the house of representatives, has now rejected the idea of accepting a draft. Some party operatives are even looking at retired Marine Corps general James Mattis, a never-married veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan known as the “Warrior Monk” for his scholarly work on war. Maybe they’ve been watching Star Wars.

PNG’s police farce

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Scarcely had we got the story out about Papua New Guinea’s anti-corruption police closing in with arrests concerning inflated legal bills allegedly authorised in a previous government by the now prime minister Peter O’Neill, than the counter-push by O’Neill’s allies in the police force began.

Police Commissioner Gari Baki suspended the head of the National Fraud and Anti-Corruption Directorate, Chief Superintendent Matthew Damaru, last Saturday. Baki said his move was not directly related to the arrests earlier that week of PNG’s attorney-general, a Supreme Court judge and O’Neill’s lawyer, nor prompted by the prime minister. “I have taken steps to assume control of the erratic and out-of-control National Fraud and Anti-Corruption Directorate and to restore some integrity into the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary,” Baki said.

Damaru got a court injunction on Monday ordering a stop to the suspension and his return to work. However, police then put chains and locks on the anti-corruption directorate office later that day, and parked a vehicle across the entrance. Baki has also suspended seven of Damaru’s officers, alleging bribes were behind some investigations. The politicised split in PNG’s police force continues.

BRICS bats

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Things are not going well for some leaders of the newly industrialising powers that for a while were fashionably known as the BRICS − Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.

Brazil’s lower house of congress voted last Sunday by more than the required two-thirds majority to impeach President Dilma Rousseff for allegedly hiding a budget deficit to win re-election in 2014, as well as holding responsibility for a corruption scandal involving the state oil company and members of her ruling Workers’ Party. The case now goes to the senate: if it also approves impeachment, Rousseff has to step down for 180 days while she defends herself. This could happen in May, three months ahead of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

In South Africa, President Jacob Zuma also looks shaky. On Wednesday, veteran leaders of the ruling African National Congress will join church and civil society figures in what the group describes as a “day of action” to “reclaim a freedom that has been stolen by Zuma and his cronies”.

Zuma beat an impeachment motion in parliament on April 5, after the country’s highest court found he’d breached the constitution by failing to repay millions of rand in government funds spent on enhancements to his private mansion. In power since 2009, Zuma had lost much of his remaining public confidence last December when he sacked the well-regarded finance minister Nhlanhla Nene and replaced him with an obscure backbencher. Then followed revelations that the wealthy Indian-origin business family, the Guptas, had been influencing cabinet appointments. But a poor showing for the ANC in municipal elections on August 3 may force Zuma out.

Our man in Manila

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Fairfax Media has been in a welter of self-congratulation this week to mark 185 years of its flagship newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald. It’s a curious anniversary, perhaps reflecting doubt whether the newspaper will survive to a double century.

One episode has gone little noticed in the newspaper’s history, certainly in the account by Paul McGeough of the Herald’s various war correspondents, including himself. It was uncovered by Brisbane author Jacqui Murray in her excellent 2004 book on Australian reporting of Japan before Pearl Harbour, Watching the Sun Rise.

Under then proprietor Warwick Fairfax snr, the Herald belatedly set up a Far East news service in September 1941, sending correspondents to Singapore, Chongqing and Manila. The paper’s official history, Gavin Souter’s Company of Heralds, notes that this was suggested by the British Ministry of Information in Singapore.

What he didn’t discover in the archives, nor was he told by Sir Warwick (as the boss was by then), was that the funding of this Far East network came out of the budget of MI6 − on condition the Herald correspondents inserted regular inspired commentary into their reports, such as warnings the Japanese would get a nasty surprise if they attacked Singapore.

The British secret service continued to fund the correspondents throughout the war, Murray found, even though one of them, Jack Percival in Manila, was in a Japanese prison camp along with his wife and baby, the latter born a POW. Still pregnant, Joyce Percival had elected to stay while Fairfax general manager “Rags” Henderson took the last flying boat out before the city fell. This way of sharing the hardship continues in Fairfax management to this day, it seems, under Maserati-driving chief executive Greg Hywood.

Karen Middleton
An audit report covering Scott Morrison’s role in the New Zealand tourism office raises serious concerns over transparency and due process.The NZ auditor’s criticisms of Morrison are similar to some of those the Australian National Audit Office would make nine years later in its own report examining the management of Tourism Australia.

Charis Palmer
As the government pushes to legislate for control of energy prices, retailers blame poor policy for rising bills. Meanwhile, experts say, the market continues to be gamed by energy generators.

Ella Donald Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn developed a taste for the macabre at an early age, but she’s keen to dispel the myth that she is who she writes. She talks about her depictions of deeply disturbed and disturbing women and the release of her latest film project, Widows. “There’s a reason we’re fascinated with domestic-based murders. It allows us to talk about marriage and family and what goes on behind closed doors. It gives us a strange vocabulary and permission to talk about those things we wouldn’t otherwise.”

Dylan Voller
If we didn’t riot, if we didn’t bring attention to the situation that way, all of these abuses would still be hidden out of sight. No one would know what goes on in Don Dale. Ultimately, we need all youth detention centres shut down and resources and power given to Aboriginal community leaders to develop alternative programs and facilities based on country, to help children who are caught up in violence and trauma to heal.

Paul Bongiorno
The question dogging Scott Morrison as he rubs shoulders with world leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Port Moresby this weekend is how long he will remain a member of this exclusive club. By his own admission, the chances are slim. The accidental prime minister – catapulted into the job when a majority of the Liberal Party room 12 weeks ago preferred him over Peter Dutton – is failing miserably.

If you take out all the pages from The Sydney Morning Herald reporting on allegations of inappropriate touching there wouldn’t be enough newsprint to wrap a flounder. The latest revelation is that while the ABC board was at Billy Kwong’s, tucking into the saltbush cakes and crispy skin duck with Davidson’s plums, the then managing director’s back allegedly got rubbed, ickily. Litigation regarding this sort of thing is rampant.

The euphemism in the documents calls the grants “departmental approaches”. Everywhere else in Indigenous affairs, the money has to be begged; here, it is given freely. Possibly because here it can be used to fight Indigenous interests. By Nigel Scullion’s own admission, the money was for “legal fees, effectively … to put forward a case of detriment to the land commissioner”. That is, to object to native title claims.

Celina Ribeiro
The NSW government’s plan to make it easier to adopt children in out-of-home care has been criticised for not allowing sufficient time for parents to restore their families and for potentially creating a new Stolen Generation.

Hamish McDonald
Scott Morrison and Xi Jinping take on international diplomacy in the Pacific. Beijing boosting regional security, not military. South-west Pacific in political turmoil. ‘Soft power’ review under way as case made for Radio Australia’s return.

Sophie Quick
At the KidZania labour-themed fun park in Singapore, children earn pretend money working pretend jobs as insurance agents or pharmacists, while their parents stand in depressingly familiar queues.

Richard Cooke
As she competes in the ICC Women’s World Twenty20, Australian cricketer Sophie Molineux talks about the advantages of being a left-handed all-rounder and why she no longer bowls a wrong ’un.

Karen Middleton
An audit report covering Scott Morrison’s role in the New Zealand tourism office raises serious concerns over transparency and due process.The NZ auditor’s criticisms of Morrison are similar to some of those the Australian National Audit Office would make nine years later in its own report examining the management of Tourism Australia.

Charis Palmer
As the government pushes to legislate for control of energy prices, retailers blame poor policy for rising bills. Meanwhile, experts say, the market continues to be gamed by energy generators.

Ella Donald Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn developed a taste for the macabre at an early age, but she’s keen to dispel the myth that she is who she writes. She talks about her depictions of deeply disturbed and disturbing women and the release of her latest film project, Widows. “There’s a reason we’re fascinated with domestic-based murders. It allows us to talk about marriage and family and what goes on behind closed doors. It gives us a strange vocabulary and permission to talk about those things we wouldn’t otherwise.”

Dylan Voller
If we didn’t riot, if we didn’t bring attention to the situation that way, all of these abuses would still be hidden out of sight. No one would know what goes on in Don Dale. Ultimately, we need all youth detention centres shut down and resources and power given to Aboriginal community leaders to develop alternative programs and facilities based on country, to help children who are caught up in violence and trauma to heal.

Paul Bongiorno
The question dogging Scott Morrison as he rubs shoulders with world leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Port Moresby this weekend is how long he will remain a member of this exclusive club. By his own admission, the chances are slim. The accidental prime minister – catapulted into the job when a majority of the Liberal Party room 12 weeks ago preferred him over Peter Dutton – is failing miserably.

If you take out all the pages from The Sydney Morning Herald reporting on allegations of inappropriate touching there wouldn’t be enough newsprint to wrap a flounder. The latest revelation is that while the ABC board was at Billy Kwong’s, tucking into the saltbush cakes and crispy skin duck with Davidson’s plums, the then managing director’s back allegedly got rubbed, ickily. Litigation regarding this sort of thing is rampant.

The euphemism in the documents calls the grants “departmental approaches”. Everywhere else in Indigenous affairs, the money has to be begged; here, it is given freely. Possibly because here it can be used to fight Indigenous interests. By Nigel Scullion’s own admission, the money was for “legal fees, effectively … to put forward a case of detriment to the land commissioner”. That is, to object to native title claims.

Celina Ribeiro
The NSW government’s plan to make it easier to adopt children in out-of-home care has been criticised for not allowing sufficient time for parents to restore their families and for potentially creating a new Stolen Generation.

Hamish McDonald
Scott Morrison and Xi Jinping take on international diplomacy in the Pacific. Beijing boosting regional security, not military. South-west Pacific in political turmoil. ‘Soft power’ review under way as case made for Radio Australia’s return.

Sophie Quick
At the KidZania labour-themed fun park in Singapore, children earn pretend money working pretend jobs as insurance agents or pharmacists, while their parents stand in depressingly familiar queues.

Richard Cooke
As she competes in the ICC Women’s World Twenty20, Australian cricketer Sophie Molineux talks about the advantages of being a left-handed all-rounder and why she no longer bowls a wrong ’un.